Youths' hopes draw on vision of peace

The next heavy rainfall will probably erase the huge white dove from the bricks at City Hall Plaza in Boston. But its creators want the message of peace symbolized by that public art to endure.

The project is spearheaded by artist Robert Guillemin of Newton, better known by the nickname Sidewalk Sam, who for 39 years has been painting murals in chalk and temporary paint on urban sidewalks across Boston and beyond.

He and more than 1,000 youths from summer programs around the city launched the campaign on July 20, when they converged on City Hall. The 4,000-square-foot dove emerged from the bricks as the army of young painters filled in an outline of a bird, wings outstretched, with white temporary paint.

In the remaining weeks of summer, Guillemin will work with city kids to paint 600 4-foot-by-6-foot doves on sidewalks all over Boston and beyond, in hopes of discouraging violence and inspiring peace in the young artists and passersby.

"The city will be filled up with symbols of peace, not left with symbols of violence," he said.

For Guillemin, a Cambridge native, the project is the latest development in a career that began four decades ago, with bachelor's and master's degrees in art from Boston University. After finishing his studies, he moved to France and landed a job at the Louvre in Paris, copying the artworks of European masters.

After returning to Boston in 1965, Guillemin said, he had a revelation. He had grown disillusioned with art that he saw as only for the privileged, on display in the controlled and sterile settings of museums or private homes. He wanted to put art on the streets.

"I went out on the streets and swept aside cigarette butts and bubble gum, and drew, in chalk, a copy of the 'Mona Lisa'," Guillemin said.

Since that first painting, he's done thousands of sidewalk murals around the United States, the majority of them in Boston.

Many of those works have been reproductions of familiar masterpieces by such icons as Renoir or Van Gogh. But in recent years, he's partnered with such local institutions as the New England Aquarium and Franklin Park Zoo to promote their programs through sidewalk art.

Somewhere along the way, he picked up the nickname Sidewalk Sam, though he can't remember when. "I don't even think of it as a nickname. It's what I've become. I'm a creature of the sidewalk."

Earlier this year, Guillemin spoke with Mayor Thomas M. Menino about using public art to promote peace and counteract what they saw as a troubling culture of violence in the city. Guillemin's sidewalk murals, they thought, would be the perfect medium.

Guillemin came up with the doves-of-peace concept and drew up an emblem featuring the dove and a banner that states: "Stop violence, create peace."

Following the creation of the giant dove, the first of 600 smaller doves was planned for a sidewalk in Brighton Center.

At the kickoff at City Hall Plaza, Guillemin walked around explaining his vision to groups of 20 to 30 novice painters, before sending them off to paint the dove.

"We want this to be a solution for a terrible problem of violence, to show that we are beautiful people and we have peace in our hearts, and Boston is going to see that we are dedicated to peace," he told one group of campers.

As wave after wave of youngsters took brush to brick, they made quick work of the dove.

The event was scheduled to run from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., but the dove was almost completely painted by noon. Guillemin's enthusiasm had certainly rubbed off on his apprentice artists, even if they might have found his idealism a bit lofty.

"Some people don't believe in peace," 10-year-old Mabel Gonzalez of Mattapan said. She had helped paint one of the dove's wings with fellow campers from Camp Joy at Madison Park High. "This is so people can have fun."